The first thing Slim did after getting back to the forecastle was to take one of his blue flannel shirts and, while none of the officers was looking, shin up the ratlines and hang it on the fore-lift. This is an old-time sailor sign of distress and means trouble aboard. The mate soon spied the shirt swinging in the breeze.
"Well, I'll be darned," he said. "Jump up there one of you and take that shirt down."
No one stirred. The mate called the cabin boy and the young Kanaka brought down the shirt. Slim told us at dinner time all about his adventure in the cabin.
"I goes down in the cabin," said Slim, "and the captain is standing with his hands in his pants pockets, smiling friendly-like. 'Hello, Slim,' he says. 'Sit down in this chair.' I sits down and the captain says, 'Well, my boy, what's the matter with you?' 'I'm sick,' says I. 'Where do you feel bad?' he says. 'I ache all over,' says I. He steps over in front of me, still with that little smile on his face. 'I've got good medicine aboard this ship,' he says, 'and I'll fix you up in a jiffy, my boy,' says he. With that he jerks one of his hands out of his pocket and he has a revolver clutched in it. 'Here's the medicine you need,' he says and he bats me over the cocoanut with the gun.
"The blood spurts all over me and I jumps up and yells, but the captain points his pistol at me and orders me to sit down again. He storms up and down the cabin floor. 'I'll teach you who's master aboard this ship,' he shouts and for a minute he was so purple in the face with rage, I thought he was going to murder me for sure. By and by he cools down. 'Well, Slim,' he says, 'I guess I hit you a little harder than I meant to, but I'm a bad man when I get started. You need tending to now, sure enough.'
"So he has the cabin boy fetch a pan of warm water and he washes the blood out of my hair with his own hands and then shaves around the cut and pastes sticking plaster on. That's all. But say, will I have the law on him when we get back to Frisco? Will I?"
It was a long way back to Frisco. In the meantime we wondered what was in store for the luckless Irish grenadier.
That afternoon, the revenue cutter Corwin came steaming into port towing a poaching sealer as a prize. It was the same schooner, we learned, we had seen the Corwin chasing a few days before. As the cutter passed us, Slim sprang on the forecastle head while Captain Shorey and everybody aboard the brig looked at him and, waving a blue flannel shirt frantically, shouted: "Please come aboard. I've had trouble aboard." "Aye, aye," came back across the water from the government patrol vessel. Waving a shirt has no significance in sea tradition, but Slim was not enough of a sailor to know that, and besides, he wanted to leave nothing undone to impress the revenue cutter officers with the urgency of his case.
No sooner had the Corwin settled to her berth at the pier than a small boat with bluejackets at the oars, two officers in gold braid and epaulettes in the stern, and with the stars and stripes flying, shot out from under her quarter and headed for the brig.
"Aha," we chuckled. "Captain Shorey has got his foot in it. He has Uncle Sam to deal with now. He won't hit him over the head with a revolver."